Death and Transfiguration
by Shion Arita
Summary: After the events of the main story, humanity continues to fight their only true enemy: the darkness within themselves.
I sat meditating for about an hour and a half, trying to collect my thoughts and focus my mind. I was in a small, one-room building. In the center was a low table located on a pattern of four and a half tatami, four rectangles around a square. In front of it I knelt. To my left and right, small square windows showed a dark gray sky outside, lit by lightning from time to time. Right now, the room was the entire world, an island in the sea of chaos, the wooden walls of the hut demarcating my inner 'village' from the untamed wilderness outside the Sacred Barrier. Myself: the center; the turmoil of my mind: the all-consuming darkness outside.

There was a knock at the door. In response, I made the small glass beads that were scattered on the floor ascend and hang motionless in the air all around the room. Into them I poured all of my concentration and focus, everything I had to give, until they almost felt like an extension of my body. "Come in," I said.

A tall woman entered and walked towards the table at which I sat. She was wearing a brick red skirt and a loose black shirt with salmon trim on the neck and sleeves. Most of her hair was clipped into a loose ponytail that hung slightly to the left. She gracefully knelt down, looking directly at me. Her face bore no expression, but her body language conveyed that she was confident but not arrogant, and intent but not threatening.

As soon as she had knelt down, she spoke, "Hidenori Inoue? I'm Saki Watanabe, the head of the Kanto Ethics Board. Call me Saki. You can put the balls down for now; you should save your concentration."

I quickly replied, forgetting courtesy of introduction, "But how will you be protected from—"

She held her hands up in a 'calm down' gesture, and replied, "I'll explain that later, but for now you can rest assured that I'm not in any danger for the time being." She shifted her posture into a more comfortable pose, then continued, "To start with, tell me about yourself. The better I know you, better I can help. Though, from what I've seen outside, I've already gotten some sense of how your mind works: fragrances of rancid flowers and rotting fruit, landscapes of thorns and colored glass, a sky of lightning and finely powdered snow…"

I felt myself blushing. "That's embarrassing, for you to see that," I said.

She gave a little laugh and replied, "I've looked into the sun of your mind, and I haven't been blinded. I'm able to look right at you and accept you." It sounded like she was being serious, but also playfully mocking my embarrassment. It diffused some of the awkwardness that had plagued the conversation up until that point. I gently set all the beads down again.

"I'm Hidenori Inoue. I was born in 614, so I'm 18 years old now. I'm from Bamboo Village, and I just graduated from the Unified Class."

"From what I hear you're quite the star student, both in terms of academic learning and development of your Power."

"I try my best. Science is what I'm most interested in. My plan was to apprentice with the Library and Research Committee, and eventually do original research."

"That would serve you well, I'm sure. Head Priest Hideyoshi says you are able to create bronze from copper and tin at room temperature. How do you do that? What's the visualization you use?"

"I see the tin atoms, and flow them through the copper like tadpoles swimming in a stagnant pond."

"That's amazing! I'll have to try that myself some time."

"It's strange how quickly things change. Just a month ago I had succeeded at making the bronze, my last personal assignment for the Unified Class, and my crowning accomplishment thus far. A week ago I was spending my days on the beaches of Whitesand, eating the hamanasu rose hips with Atsuko, making love with Hiroshi… And then, I became a… a Karmic Demon."

Even though I knew it was ultimately the purpose of this conversation, I had a bit of a hard time saying it out loud.

There was a moment of silence before Saki spoke. "I'm so sorry this happened to you. I talked to your parents. I know that you were isolated from other people very quickly and didn't get a good chance to say goodbye. They say they love you very much, and that they know that this isn't your fault. I also spoke with your friends from school. They wanted to tell you that their memories will hold no ill recollections toward you, that your influence on their lives has been a good one. "

"Thanks for doing that. Tell everyone I miss them and wish I could be with them."

"I will. I take it Head Priest Hideyoshi has explained to you about your condition?

I nodded. "It's a little different than the folklore and what we're taught in school: Ogres and Karmic Demons, the two faces of evil, the victory of the enemy within. Head Priest Hideyoshi told me that I have lost conscious control over my power, and my subconscious is affecting the world around me, corrupting it into a bastardization of my own image. I never thought it would happen to me. The way they teach it in school, they try to emphasize that this is something you should be concerned about, and that it could in theory happen to you, but there's the implication that this kind of thing will only happen to 'bad' people, like people who are selfish or arrogant. When you read the stories, you think of it as a good lesson for your peers, that this might be what some of them need to hear. You never think that you would be the one to fall from grace. I guess I didn't really take the lessons to heart, after all. That's what 'sins lie within us' really means, isn't it? The lesson in the ceremony isn't for you to feel satisfied in your victory after chanting 'demons, begone!'; it's to show you what it feels like when it's your turn to wear the mask."

Saki responded, "You're probably right, but in general I'm not sure there's much point to those rituals myself. Everyone else seems to like that kind of thing, though. I think it's mostly for reasons of cultural bonding, which I must confess is not something I ever really understood. Don't consider yourself a failure or internalize our culture's condemnation of your condition. Cultures are pretty arbitrary and ephemeral, and can be as volatile as the temperature in spring. It's the self-expression of the individual, be it artistic, scientific, what have you, that will really stand the test of time... The phenomenon known as Karmic Demon, or Hashimoto-Applebaum Syndrome, is caused by a failure in the mechanisms that block most subconscious thoughts from being realized by Power. We all are leaking Power all the time at a low level, but for those with Hashimoto-Applebaum Syndrome, the lid has come off completely and there is little to no regulation. Karmic Demons turn the world around them into their own living nightmare, unable to stop themselves from distorting their environment beyond recognition."

I replied, "I really didn't want this to happen to me. The idea that what I consciously want and what I end up doing have become such different things is terrifying. It's really hard not to internalize the idea that I failed as a person and have put everyone in danger. I can't shake the idea that it could have been my fault somehow, even though I honestly don't see what I could have done so wrong. I don't know where this came from, and that's what scares me the most."

"Don't feel so bad about that. No one really understands this phenomenon at all, despite some pretty vigorous attempts to figure it out. We're all pretty much equally lost at sea."

"Let me ask, what are you here to do exactly?"

Saki replied, "I want to try to treat you. I want to see if I can save your life."

I responded, "But isn't 'Hashimoto-Applebaum syndrome' always fatal? My Power couldn't be sealed, so I can't see what could be done."

"All the others before you did not survive, yes, but if it's possible for this to be overcome, there has to be a first survivor. I want to try to make you become that first survivor. I only have bits and pieces of answers, nothing definite, but I'm going to try everything I can."

"So, how is it that you can resist the effects of my leaking Power? Head Priest Hideyoshi told me that at this stage anyone who was in proximity to me for more than a few minutes would be risking serious damage or even death."

She paused for a moment and looked slightly away from me. It looked like she was carefully considering what she was going to say. She looked back at me, and finally responded, "Hidenori… how old do you think I am?"

To be honest, I couldn't place her age. Her hair had a scattering of gray strands mixed in with the brown, and her skin was very slightly loose, but her musculature and breasts were very well-formed and defined, like those of someone in their 20s. I found her very attractive. I finally answered, "I can't really tell. Probably at least 30."

She laughed again, "A very conservative response. Well, you're technically right. I am older than 30… Currently, my age is sitting at 422 years."

I was absolutely floored by that. The question was out of my mouth before I could even process what I heard: "How are you still alive? What makes you different from everyone else?"

"I can use my Power to repair my own telomeres. Telomeres are regions on the ends of our chromosomes. Each time a cell divides, it cannot replicate all the way to the ends of the DNA, so the telomeres function as a buffer that shortens each time the cell divides. However, this buffer eventually runs out and cells reach the limits of their replication. Organisms with telomere problems do not live as long, and cancer cells exhibit abnormal telomeres. So the telomeres are involved in the aging process and regulation of cell division, and my control over them retards aging and prevents tumor formation. In addition, I can control my body's repair signals to promote regeneration over scarring in the event of injury or illness. Finally, I have gained the ability to control my DNA's methylation state, or Epigenetic Clock. Methylation of DNA is the signal that turns different genes on and off in different cells, and these levels are indicators of aging. We don't completely understand what is happening there, but I have learned how to halt those methylation changes to a standstill."

"So, those are the only things you need to do to be immortal? Not that it sounds easy to physically do, mind you, but I wouldn't think it would be possible with such a small number of changes."

"My predecessor, Tomiko Asahina, could also repair her telomeres. She was the grandmother of my first husband, Satoru. I asked her the same question you did when she told me about her age. To quote her response, 'No one knows what forever is like.' The only definitive claim I can make is that by doing these things I am able to live much longer than anyone else, but four hundred years is only a drop in the oceans of history. 'Forever' is almost a foreign concept to our intuitions. Nearly 1700 years ago was the first time someone got a glimpse into the true abyss of time. He was a man named James Hutton, and he lived on the other side of the world, in a place then called Scotland. The prehistoric civilizations of the time believed the world to be only several thousand years old. Hutton noticed that with each rain, some soil was washed away and carried to the ocean by rivers. He became concerned that eventually all the land in the world would be eroded away and the rains their crops depended on would one day bring an end to human life. Then, he saw an exposed rock face which featured all kinds of horizontal and vertical rock strata. Eventually he realized that the land he stood on came from sediment deposited on the ocean floor by erosion that had welled up and folded over itself to form land. And this process of destruction and rebirth of land occurred on scales of time utterly incomprehensible to human intuitions. The presence of multiple groups of strata showed that this immensely long process had also repeated countless times, with 'no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.' As his associate said, 'The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far back into the abyss of time; and whilst we listened with earnestness and admiration to the philosopher who was now unfolding to us the order and series of these wonderful events, we became sensible how much further reason may sometimes go than imagination may venture to follow.' So, will I live forever? Who can say? I can say I plan to make it as long as I can. Ah. The reason I got on this is as follows: at its current levels, I will incur no cellular damage from your leaking Power that I cannot easily repair. I should be safe near you until the spill gets significantly worse. And then I have other techniques that will be able to protect me for a time."

She idly levitated a piece of paper that had been sitting on the table, and cleanly severed a strip off to make it square. She let the sheet float above her upward pointing index finger, and started making a series of origami folds in it.

"What happened to Tomiko Asahina? Is she still alive too?"

"She was killed in Yakomaru's War."

That was when an intuitive sense of Saki's age hit me. Yakomaru's War was about 400 years ago. It predated events like the Kanto unification, the Azami Congregation, and the Hamaomoto Articles. It was ancient history to me, something that just as easily could have happened in another universe. But she was there. She lived through that personally, and knew people who fought and died there. Her age also implied that she was born and raised in the Age of Mist, which is the period before what is commonly considered to be modern times. The Age of Mist was so named because while society had begun to take on something similar to its modern form, there were few documents produced in that time period, and there was little contact between districts, and none with societies outside the Japanese archipelago. The way it was discussed in school was that this was when psychologically modern humans first came to exist, but society had some trouble in finding effective ways of managing itself.

I replied, "It's terrible that she's gone. It gives me a better sense of what 400 years is like, to have a historical event to anchor it to. You fought in Yakomaru's War? You must have been through so much."

Her origami work had split into several pieces, then recombined again to form something like a stellated dodecahedron. The ins and outs of its surface kept shifting and folding in on themselves, iteratively increasing in complexity. The details were now on the scale of a millimeter. It was evident that she was only partially paying attention to the origami. I only knew a couple of people who could achieve that kind of precision and control even with complete focus.

"I've seen many good and bad things in my life. The darkness you face now is no less than what I've had to deal with. But I'm not going to lament the human condition or sing sickened praises to our supposed helplessness. You don't serve almost 400 years as the head of Ethics with that kind of philosophy. One of the biggest lessons I've learned in my life is that it's ok to be happy about one thing while sad about another. Life is all hilarious and terrible and amazing at the same time. I've had very few 'pure' moments in my life, where there's only one thing going on. I think the only ones I remember were from my childhood, before my Power awakened. But, that might have partially been because the society at the time kept children ignorant of many things… adults as well for that matter. For example, me and my friends got in pretty big trouble for learning about the ancients."

"What happened exactly?"

"It's a complicated story, full of long tangents, non-sequiturs and explanations of context, all of which would be necessary to let someone who wasn't around at that time understand the story. I think we have to come back to the matter at hand. But it is a fascinating tale. I promise to tell it to you sometime if you survive."

"I'll take you up on that… So, do you have any thoughts as to how a Karmic Demon could survive?"

"I don't have many definitive answers, but I'll state the problem in the most specific way I can. Karmic Demons die because their uncontrolled powers eventually destroy their bodies, be it through chemical alteration or mechanical damage. There is even one report of a victim in what was called the Chinese mainland who… actually I'm not going to describe that now. If you become aware of it your subconscious may end up running down those tracks. For a time, the self-preserving instinct against harming one's own body prevents this, but since the disorder worsens progressively over time, this barrier eventually fails. But, even if we could prevent the self-destruction without stopping the leak, the Karmic Demon would still be a great danger to others. In other words, the leak must be stopped. We have to return you to the state you were in before the problem started, or at least something like it. I've had a great while to think about how to do this, but there hasn't been an occurrence in 100 years, so I haven't been able to test my most recent ideas."

"How many Karmic Demons have you witnessed?" I asked.

"You would be the seventh, and I've played an active role in handling all the cases. The first incident happened when I was young. He was the first boy I loved. The others I dealt with in my capacity as the Head of Ethics."

"The frequency must be decreasing then, if you've seen seven in your lifetime and none before me in the last century."

"Yes, but only because there were four in the years following Yakomaru's War. Children who had been orphaned, children raised by traumatized parents… it was not a good time for emotional stability. Thankfully, things returned to the background rate after a couple decades, but not before considerable damage had been done. The war had already caused more than enough devastation and loss of life, but its aftereffects continued to plague us for some time."

"That's terrible. Were you at least able to learn something from what happened? It sounds like that gives insight into the reasons people become Karmic Demons."

"I suppose we did learn some things, but nothing really constructive with respect to solving the problem at hand. See, the increase in cases was due to the increase in stress and trauma at the time, and we have known for a long time that those things can cause emotional instability. But we were already trying our hardest to prevent emotional instability, because we also already knew that it leads to these kinds of problems, not to mention the suffering it causes in and of itself. But personal or parental trauma are not sufficient to explain all of the incidents. Of the other three that I've seen, yourself included, none of them could be reasonably attributed to those causes, and only one is even a debatable case."

"So what are your most recent ideas? I'm ready and willing to try."

"The first thing I want to try is deep meditation with the purpose of becoming more aware of your subconscious self. I have a hypothesis that a disconnect between the desires of the conscious and subconscious mind might be partially responsible. If we can integrate those desires, we may be able to decrease the leak. Does that make sense? Are you ready to begin?"

"Yes, let's start."

Over the next few hours Saki led me into a semi-conscious state, into the depths of my own mind. After a while I became aware of thoughts and imaginings that I otherwise would not be. They didn't appear to have much to do with the changes I was effecting outside, but maybe my conscious self was just unable to see the connection. As a test, she had me try embracing some things, and rejecting other things. Regardless of my actions, Saki couldn't see any changes in the leak. We decided to give up and think about where to go from there. We spent ten minutes or so talking about ways in which what I saw during the meditation might have some kind of relevance, and eventually we got onto the topic of my emotional state.

"How are you feeling right now?" She asked.

"I'm just kind of s—s—scared!"

I was surprised by how quickly the feelings of fear and despair bubbled up and overwhelmed me. I suddenly found myself sobbing uncontrollably. Saki's response was almost comically rapid. She sort of vaulted over the table and grasped me with a tackling embrace. Some part of my mind independently operating in the background noticed how funny this reaction looked in the abstract. We found ourselves both on the ground, her arms tightly wrapped around my back, her hands stroking the back of my head. In between my sobs I found myself shouting, "I'm gonna die!"

The words were coming out before I could fully process what I was saying, which was ironic given the problem I faced. Saki kept patting my head and stroking my back, saying "You're not alone. We'll try to work this out. I'm trying my best for your sake. We'll go through this together."

I nuzzled my face into her shirt and continued to cry, my attention drifting toward the feeling of our contact, the rhythm of her breathing and stroking, the sound of her voice. Slowly, I began to calm down. We lay there like that for a few minutes until eventually I pulled away and sat up, wiping my eyes. She sat up as well and put her arm on my shoulder. After a pause, I said, "I think I'm ok now."

For the next couple of hours, we kept the conversation going. Saki talked a lot about her views on things, often going off on relevant tangents to talk about her personal experiences and things she had read about. Her age enabled her to have a deep wealth of experience and wisdom that made her come at things from a different angle than other people could.

My emotions built up again, and this time I also felt the corruption start to well up in me, like the gathering cumulonimbus before a thunderstorm. I lifted the beads again to divert the flow. I could feel that this time was going to be bad. I told Saki, fighting back the tears again, "You should leave. It's flaring up again. It's going to be bad. I think this might be the one that does me in."

"Ok. I can stay for a while. I'll feel it when I have to leave."

The air around her took on a slight optical distortion, not unlike heat blur, but with some kind of prism effect. I recognized it as the oft-warned-about spatial distortion that came from clashing Power of multiple people. The shape this distortion took made it look a little like she was sitting inside a giant soap bubble. She said that at low levels, she could oppose my Power around her body safely. I couldn't even imagine the amount of dexterity and finesse she must have had with her Power to be able to do something like that.

She started asking me about my childhood and teenage years, and I told her stories from my life. I liked doing this, because if I died today, my memories and the things that I did and saw that I found interesting would be preserved in her 'immortal' mind. I asked her what me talking about these things meant to her. She answered, "I want to know you better, and see if there are any other patterns in the people who develop Hashimoto-Applebaum syndrome. There might be something meaningful in there, something that could let me help you or others in the future. Also, do you know all of those open answer questions and interviews you were given in school?"

"Yes," I replied. Most of those things were asking about my emotions and outlook on things, and about reflection on what I had learned and my past experiences. I had guessed that they essentially existed to make sure all of the students were doing ok mentally and emotionally, and maybe to look at our styles of thought.

Saki continued, "From those, and other metrics the students are evaluated on, like coursework, they are assigned a global score, called the Personality Index. I think it's a little primitive, since collapsing a lot of information about someone into a scalar isn't the most informative or meaningful thing in my opinion, but I don't think it's an entirely useless metric for measuring the general capabilities of a person. Your score is very high. The highest I've seen in a very long time. Because of this, I was considering you as a candidate for someone to serve as my replacement should some misfortune befall me. If you survive, I'll still consider you for that position."

My life had gotten pretty strange and heavy over the past few days, but that was still a pretty shocking statement to have dropped on me. She had been paying attention to me even though we'd never spoken directly before today? And after doing so, after 'looking into the sun of my mind', she still thought that highly of me? I wasn't sure how to respond. Eventually, I replied, "I'm really surprised that you think that highly of me. I'll take the compliment though. I never really thought of myself as a leader. I think I have too many dumb and random ideas for people to take me seriously."

Then, I told the story of the time me and Atsuko got in trouble with the teachers for sneaking into Kisuge Elementary School at night because we wanted to say goodnight to the false minoshiro statue. The nostalgia and longing for a return for those days, those 'pure moments' was too much to bear, and my control wavered. I felt my anguish and fear rushing on like a wave about to break, and saw the tatami on the floor undulate in sympathy. I redoubled my efforts on the beads, and the external motion subsided, but inside I felt my emotions continue to grow like a building electric charge.

After a minute she said, "I'm really sorry, but I don't think I can stay with you any longer. I've reached the limit of my ability to protect myself. I have to go." She reached into her pocket and drew out a decent sized ball of white plastic. She levitated it in front of her and molded it into a featureless mask with slits for the holes in the eyes and mouth. She floated it to me and I put it on. She didn't need to say anything: I knew what it was. It was to have me try to hide behind the expressionless face and dampen my identity. Maybe it would help a little.

Saki got up and walked to the door, and paused right after she grabbed the handle. I replied, "It's ok. I know you have to leave. Please get out of here before you get hurt."

She opened the door, and as she was about to step through it she turned back to look at me, her hair blowing in the wind from outside, and said, "Please stay alive, Hidenori." as a tear ran down her face. I could tell that she didn't want to leave me alone, but we both knew she had to go. After a pause, she turned and walked out. Her empathy gave me strength to face the oncoming storm.

While I waited for the time I would be overcome, I studied Saki's paper creation, which she had left on the table, losing myself in its intricate symmetries. I felt like I was falling into its patterns and almost forgetting the passage of time. I think it made me last a little longer.

I wanted to get away from the hut so it wouldn't be destroyed, so I would have somewhere to talk to Saki if I survived. It was night, so the landscape had taken on a tone that was much more disturbing than its appearance during the day. I ran across the vitrified ground, crushing twisted shards underfoot, dodging pools of corrosive chemicals. To my right a lone tree still stood. Its leaves were gone and it was on fire, dropping slag into an oily pool. A fork of lightning blasted from the top of the tree into the sky, burning its image into my retinas, the thunder hurting my ears.

I kept running, and the frequency of the lightning increased, with the flashes in the sky becoming almost a constant flicker lighting up the night, and strikes on the ground occurring every few seconds. I started to feel tremors underfoot.

The snowflakes falling from the sky gave way to a rain of a dark orange-brown liquid, whose odor was nauseating beyond description and to the point of physical pain. The drops were very sparse, but large. Where the liquid touched me it instantly created burning wounds. The pain was almost unbearable, and I had nothing with which I could wash the stuff off, so it slithered down my skin, carving trails of destruction as it flowed. I realized that even just this rain was life threatening, so I used what Power I could muster control over to divert the path of the drops and make them fall around me rather than onto my body, and I tore off my shirt and tried to dab as much of it off of me as I could.

I felt it building inside me to terrifying levels, and the tremors got worse. I tried to call upon my best memories, my happiest moments, to try to bring something else into focus, to try to stop it however I could.

… _naming all the plants in the garden with my mother… my first romantic kiss with a girl, my hands around Atsuko's waist in a field of moonlit mist… me and my cousin dissolving more and more sugar into a glass of icy water… Hiroshi's cry of satisfaction when I put his dick in my mouth… my grandfather showing me how he made bonsai, training branches with helices of copper wire, carving and bleaching Jin and Shari into the wood with his Power… fireworks blossom above Lake Kausmigaura… FIRE! BAMBOO VILLAGE BURNS, ATSUKO LOOKS UP AT ME DESPARETELY, HER CLOTHES IN TATTERS, BODY PARTS BURNED AWAY…_

 _As I feel my fear enveloping me like licking flames, a ring of fire erupts around me, Fallen branches turn to scaly charcoal, and crackling sparks fly into the night._

… _my father and I fix a broken oil lamp… the smell of amaryllis blooming in the closet… Atsuko's cat tackles her mechanical toy minoshiro; it pantomimes its lockstep gait as it's getting chewed on… playing catch with my mother using my newly awakened Power…HOWLING WINDS UNEARTH SKELETAL CORPSES IN THE STREETS… tadpoles of tin flow through copper, energy levels settle and the metals harden as they embrace… my groupmates play a game of searching for hidden objects… Perseid meteors raking across the night sky… mom and dad stacking huge towers of rocks by the beach… winning the ball pushing game against the students of Koumi 95… my grandparents telling me stories from their youth… INHUMAN FANGED FACES CROWD TOGETHER LIKE BUBBLES BLOWN WITH A STRAW… CARRION BIRDS OF ASH PECK AT THE CORPSES OF MY FAMILY... HIROSHI GETTING POURED ON BY THE BROWN DEATH-RAIN, WRITHING AND SCREAMING IN AGONY…_

 _The ashes of the wood twist into terrible forms that rush around me. The dark rain starts to fall faster. I can barely keep it at bay. I am not winning this fight. The distinction between my mind's eye and what I actually observe in reality has almost completely broken down. I scramble to find something to hold on to, one last stand to make._

… _family and friends sitting around the dinner table, when I turned seventeen and came of age… I HAVE MADE A MOCKERY OF ALL THAT THEY VALUE. I STAND BEFORE THE RAGING FLAMES IN THE TEMPULE OF PURIFICATION. I AM THE PAPER DOLL THAT BURNS IN THE PIT AT THE ALTAR. I AM THE BAD KARMA THAT MUST BE DISCARDED!_

 _A form rises from a pool of the dark rain. It ripples and morphs, eventually taking the shape of my mask: a mask made of Karmic Demon's blood, its color in contrast to my white one. The mask of the Karmic Demon stares at me, a void of nothingness behind the eyeholes. It speaks no words, for it has none, but it beckons me into the abyss, the abyss that I know is me, the pitch-black abyss against which the sentience of humanity is only a fleeting and doomed adversary. The raging winds are my terror itself, the mask and rain my despair. I feel something coming, a building pressure like when my Power first awakened. But this time I feel it tainted with evil._

I knew I could no longer keep it from spilling over, so I braced myself right before the eruption that was to come. Then the depths of my personal hell opened up.

What would otherwise take millions of years was transpiring in a matter of seconds:

great fissures opened in the earth, and pieces of land rose and fell past each other, long buried rock welling up and folding over on itself in jagged sheets. I could no longer keep my footing, so I let myself fall to the ground. The winds swelled up to hurricane force, whipping dirt and glass and burning oil into me.

I covered my face with my shirt and hoped I wouldn't be crushed by flying boulders. I felt rapid oscillations of heat and cold and saw bursts of light through my shirt and closed eyelids. I do not know how long it lasted, but it felt like forever as I lay there, being tossed around from time to time, waiting for it to stop one way or the other. Eventually the chaos ramped down and I pulled the shirt off of my face and sat up. I was cut, burned, sore all over, and exhausted, but I managed to get up and walk. Somehow, I was still alive.

The hut remained, but was damaged and misshapen. The wood was twisted and warped, and there was a spire of rock jutting through the roof. I was about to pass out, and going inside before doing that seemed like a good idea. Though there was some risk of the hut collapsing on me, I thought it was more likely that the lethal rain would return, so I decided to take my chances with the hut. Luckily the door could still be opened. The tatami nearest to the door was concave since the floor had sunk down, but that didn't matter. I crumpled onto it and lost consciousness.

When I woke up, Saki had returned, and was applying disinfectant to my cuts and chemical burns. The light outside coming in through the clouds indicated that it was the next morning, and that I had slept through the night. We made eye contact, and she asked, "Those worm-burns are nasty. What the hell caused that?"

I replied, "I think it was elemental bromine." She grimaced in disgust.

She took out some bandages, and said, "There's some really dangerous stuff out there. I don't think I should go near the epicenter even now. I'm glad you made it through."

"Hutton would have loved to see my handiwork," I offered. That statement must have been unexpected, since she chuckled for quite a long time. Her laughter made me reciprocate genuinely, easing my tensions greatly.

I saw that she had used her Power to straighten out the hut a bit. It didn't look like it was likely to collapse anymore.

Saki asked, applying the bandages, "So, have you thought of anything that could help us?"

"Could I be blinded? I know that Power requires line of sight to work, so would loss of my sight be enough to stop my Power?"

"It's actually a misconception that Power requires line of sight. The idea comes from the fact that the most common use of Power is moving a macroscopic object or material. Obviously, to do that you necessarily need to know the precise location of that object or material in three dimensional space. But that's only a specific case of Power use. What exactly we are physically doing when we use our Power is still not known, but it appears that knowledge and understanding of what is to be done is the requirement. There are many things that you can know about and understand despite the fact that you can't see them, and you can use your Power to affect them. For example, you learned to manipulate the copper and tin at the molecular level despite the fact that you cannot directly perceive molecules. Likewise I cannot directly perceive my telomeres. Also, the effects of our subconscious on the environment take place over large distances and long spans of time, which is also beyond our direct perception."

That made a lot of sense. I wondered why I had just taken that line of sight factoid on face value when it was so obviously untrue upon examination. "I see…" I said, "But wouldn't just disrupting or weakening my Power be enough?

"The hypnotic strobe therapy that Head Priest Hideyoshi gave you works by overstimulating the visual cortex and attenuating your arbitrary and spontaneous visualizations. But as you've seen, it only works to a small extent. The same goes for attempting to seal your Power."

"I read that in the past only some humans had Power, since having Power is a genetic trait. Could I be genetically modified to lose my Power?"

"Unfortunately, no. It's true that Power is genetic, and we have identified some groups of genetic factors required for it, but those are developmental genes. Once your brain has already formed, and your Power is awakened, you have it. Changing the genes after the fact won't make you lose your abilities."

"What if you were to go into my brain and destroy parts of it, like my visual centers? Would that be enough to take my Power away?"

"I'm sorry, but that won't work either. After the discovery of Power, or PK as they called it back then, but before the fall of prehistoric civilization, many societies tried to destroy people's PK abilities, but to no avail. Early PKs were subjected to all sorts of horrific things, lobotomization of various brain parts for example, in an attempt to remove their Power. It was quickly learned that for someone whose Power is awakened, it is inherently a part of their mind. As long as they are alive and have brain activity, their Power exists in some form. Removing sight or visual processing may prevent a person from doing certain kinds of things with their Power, but it will still manifest in other ways. We won't be able to stop the leak by blocking your Power entirely. We have to think of something else."

We sat thinking silently for a couple of minutes. I thought of a question that could lead in a promising direction. "So _why_ is it that my power is leaking out of control? What's going on in my mind that's causing this to happen? I don't think my personality is any different than it was a few weeks ago."

Saki thought for a little while, then responded, "Like I said before, people who become Karmic Demons are usually the most intelligent, talented, observant, and sensitive individuals. Of course, most people who fit those descriptions do not become Karmic Demons, but almost all Karmic Demons had personalities that fit those descriptions. I think from this we can assume that those traits are somehow partially responsible for the problem. The classical conception is that Karmic Demons come from these superintelligent and possibly superarrogant people, and it's somehow that pride and arrogance that makes them subconsciously think they should remake the world in their image. There may be some modicum of truth to that, but I think it's mostly a way for people to blame the Karmic Demons and hold them responsible for the problem, because it just feels 'right' for the problem to come from some character flaw in the person. The world doesn't necessarily work like that, though. There's no reason _a priori_ that someone couldn't end up this way through no 'fault' of their own. The traits that lead to Hashimoto-Applebaum syndrome may not be bad things in isolation, but indirectly lead to disaster in the context of some other factors. I know you asked me the question, but let me turn it back to you: why do _you_ think this is happening? Is there anything that you can see from your first-person perspective that might be an explanation, even if only a partial one?"

I took another minute of self-examination, and replied, "Now is not the time for modesty or politeness, so I'm going to be blunt. Also, this is all only a conjecture. I know I'm smart. In some ways the 'arrogant' label could apply to me as well. I try not to come across that way, and deep down I don't think I have more moral worth than other people or anything, but at the end of the day, I do feel like I have the subconscious attitude that I'm going to be the guy who has the ideas, who does the intellectual things. Maybe others have some kind of trepidation about change or their own efficacy, whereas I subconsciously want to impose my will on everything, and it creates this nexus that's too big to control on its own. Maybe one part of me isn't 'ready' for all the ideas of the others… I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this but I hope you get something from what I'm saying... But I'm not the only one who's smart. Most of the others do not get Hashimoto-Applebaum syndrome. For example, you're the smartest person I've ever met, and I can just tell that you're of no risk of having this problem. Maybe it's because you're open-minded yet not radical. You say everyone has these crazy subconscious thoughts and visualizations, and that these things do leak out of everyone at low levels. So the question really becomes: why is it that my Power decides to act on these subconscious thoughts against my volition and choice? Am I just completely oblivious with respect to whether what I'm feeling at a particular time is valid and constructive? Or does it come from some pent up subconscious feelings of inadequacy and fear? One other thing that is told in the lore of Karmic Demons is that they often come from people who were alone or isolated. In the classical sense I don't think that's the case for me: among my peers I have friends and sexual partners, my family is kind and supportive, and I consider myself to be in step with humanity and its goals. However… to my community, to culture, to the pulse of the times in Kamisu, I feel no connection. I guess it's that… I don't really see anything I could do that these people would really care about. I know that sounds like it stands in contrast to what I said before about me being the guy with the ideas, but I guess this is all about this sense I have that all of my preferences run orthogonal to everyone else's…But, going back to what I said before, you would never have this problem, even though you say you aren't so deep in our culture either… I know you could never become a Karmic Demon, but I can't verbalize why. If we could figure that out, we might have an answer. I know you have all these years of experience over me, but I get the impression you were just as stable in your youth too… I'm rambling, aren't I? Ultimately, I like who I am, but if I need to become someone else to survive, I'll do it. Especially if I also become a better person in the process."

"Your willingness to change yourself, to fundamentally become the person you need to be to survive tells me that you really have vision. And while you may be weighed down by the fetters of instinct, you are able to overcome them. We like to think of ourselves as an enlightened people, evolved beyond the tar pits of violence and strife that dragged our ancestors down. We've given ourselves free love to resolve conflict, aversions to harming our own kind, and even Death Feedback, the 'ultimate' defense against violence. But the reason we experience those sexual drives is that we have a lot of conflicts. Those aversions stay our hand but underneath the malice still exists. We wear a mask of civility on top of the animal base. This is not so fundamentally different than the barbarians that preceded us; they had masks of their own—not in the same form as ours, but serving basically the same function. I've read a lot of their books: It's a very strange experience. Most of the people's actions and motivations make sense on a basic level, but the whole thing feels like it's taking place on another planet: it's not even the fact that their methods of achieving their goals are so alien, but rather that their goals and priorities themselves are all different, too. Understandable, but different. I do think that our methods of controlling aggression are more advanced and effective, but they are still only dykes protecting the city; the raging seas beyond still exist. Some writers have tried to paint this as artistic or tragically beautiful, or that our spark of creativity and inspiration comes from this place as well. I disagree. I think there is another part of us, something that is neither mask nor beast beneath it. That place is where things like intelligence, creativity and curiosity come from. And I think that it is this thing that is the true value of humanity. We may be able to afford to lose anything else. We could lose the form of our bodies, romance and the emotion of love, the limiters on our aggression, our instincts of empathy, or even our Power itself. I do not know if we would be able to survive without these things, but I do know that the one thing we truly cannot do without is that curiosity and creativity. We may be able to survive without it, but that is the only thing we could lose where I would ask what the point of existence would be in its absence. If there is a basket into which we are forced to put all our eggs, that is the one we should choose. In my youth, my criticisms of my society—society in the Age of Mist as you would call it—focused on the repression of knowledge, the denial of truth and revision of memory. I was directly hurt by all of those things, so that is what I came to hate: being kept in ignorance. I still agree with those criticisms, but as the events grow more distant in time my reflections on them become more distant and external as well. Now I think that our real problem back then, the thing that most everything else stemmed from, was a lack of vision, a lack of that kind of creativity and curiosity. Tomiko was one of the only people to keep that alive in those times, and try to perpetuate it into the future by experimenting on my Group. Is where we go wrong always that lack of vision, lack of attention to creativity and curiosity, or is there something else?..."

She paused for a moment in thought, then continued, "So where does this leave us? Those who develop Hashimoto-Applebaum syndrome are not those with the most malice in their hearts. On the contrary, they tend to be the most sensitive people. So it is not the content of their subconscious thoughts that is the problem. It is the fact that these thoughts manifest in reality to a much greater extent than they do in normal people. I certainly don't claim to lack violence or malice in all of my subconscious thoughts, nor do I have complete conscious control over my Power. However, I do not leak enough to cause danger, and what is leaked I subconsciously direct outside the Sacred Barrier. I'd wager that the reason only those who are so sensitive and observant become Karmic Demons is that someone not so in tune with their environment wouldn't warp it to such a strong degree even if their Power was leaking out of their control. If that's right it's a pretty dark irony because you are so interested in the natural world and understanding your environment, but in the end it might be your own observation and curiosity gone rogue that is dangerously distorting it… 'Become a better person'… What _is_ a better person that one could become?..."

I didn't have an answer to that, so I started to think about it. It was evident that Saki was also deep in thought. She startled me when she broke the silence, since she was speaking in a fast and excited manner, in contrast with the pensive tone she had before, "I just thought of something. I want to try it right now. Sorry, but I'm not going to tell you what it is until we do it, because I think it'll have the most impact that way. Come on. We have to go into town."

I responded, "What if I have another big spill when I'm there? Isn't that really risky?"

"We'll only be there for a short time. It's only to get something and leave by other means. We'll do this as quickly as possible."

"Why don't you just go get it and bring it here, then?"

"Because it will be faster if I don't have to make the return journey, and I don't know how much longer you have."

"Ok."

She took my hand and led me out of the hut. My hut was located at the peak of Tategishiyama, and the area where I had let loose was another elevated area to the north. We headed east, toward the river where her boat was tied. I wasn't in good enough shape to run, but I could walk at a decent pace, and it was only a couple of kilometers. After a time, we came to the end of the area that I had majorly corrupted and headed down into a valley that she told me was a strip mine long ago. We continued out of this depression into flatter lands, and eventually came to the water.

The boat was a speed model: lightweight ceramic sitting high in the water on two pontoons with two enantiomeric steel propellers between them. We hopped on and took off down the canal. The path the water took was narrow and winding, but Saki accelerated the boat to speeds that to me did not seem even close to safe. We must have been going at least 100 kilometers per hour. When I voiced my concern she said that she could handle it. We took a turn south onto a channel that Saki said was artificially dug to connect this system to one that led to Lake Kitaura. When we hit that system we started going southeast. The channel widened as we went, and eventually fanned out dramatically into Lake Kitaura. The place we were headed to was on the north end of Pinewind Village, which Saki told me had been destroyed when her childhood friend turned into a Karmic Demon. It had long since been rebuilt, however, so I really didn't want to be responsible for its destruction a second time.

Saki stopped the boat when we arrived at our destination. We got out and proceeded to walk across a field with several small buildings lining the perimeter. Thankfully, there was no one else around.

We came to a small brick storage shed with a wooden door pointing toward the interior of the field. Saki opened the door and I followed her in. Sitting on the ground was a short stack of pentagonal plates made of an astonishingly flawless transparent material. The diameter of their circumscribed circle would be about two meters, and they were about six centimeters thick. They were tapered, so that the bottom face was slightly larger than the top face. Saki levitated the stack and backed up out of the storeroom with it in tow.

Once we were well into the field she set the lowest plate down and stepped onto it. She beckoned for me to do the same, so I did.

Saki scattered the other plates from the stack and had them surround us. They came together to form a dodecahedral shell around us, with the plate we stood on as the bottom face. The plates then fused together, encasing us in a seamless dodecahedron.

Saki said, "This is the _Mizugame_. Its purpose is to allow people to leave the atmosphere and go into outer space. It's essentially a protective shell that keeps a pressurized atmosphere inside. In addition, high lead content in the material offers radiation protection."

"We're going into space? I didn't even know we had something like this. I read once that the ancients had gone into space, and I always wondered whether we would try to do that again. It's not like there's no point to flight. The Rats like to use those airplanes."

"We've had it for a few of years now, but we've only fully used it once in a test. Reentry and landing requires a lot of concentration, so we're trying to think of ways to make that process easier and safer before we start using it more. But we need to go to space to try my idea, so I'm willing to do it. I assume you're ok with the fact that it's dangerous given your situation."  
"Yeah. If this doesn't work, I'm doomed anyway, so it doesn't matter. Plus, you say the hard part is landing it. If I'm going to die anyway I'd rather go into space first than not… We're really going into space. That's pretty amazing."

"It sure is an experience. I was on the _Mizugame_ when we took it into space last time. Without further ado, let's go."

"Ok."

With a small jerk followed by a feeling of acceleration, we started to ascend. The field grew smaller and smaller, and more and more of Kamisu 66 became visible. The Tone River was southwest of us, snaking up and to the northwest. I soon could see the ocean in the distance, the beaches of Whitesand a faint strip. In only a minute, we were already many kilometers up. I could see the entire angular eastward pointing peninsula of Kamisu, and Lake Kasumigaura and Mt. Tsukuba to the west.

"Amazing…" I breathed. Looking up, I noticed I could see the stars despite the presence of the sun to the west. I could also begin to see the curvature of the Earth.

Saki said, "The atmosphere is no longer too dense. I'm going into the second phase of ascent."

Suddenly, the feeling of acceleration stopped and was replaced by freefall. My feet left the bottom of the _Mizugame_ and I gave an involuntary yell. For a moment I thought something had gone wrong and we were plummeting to our deaths, but I could see that instead we were still rising, even faster than before. Gentle hands of Saki's Power stopped me from drifting around and we were anchored floating in the center of the _Mizugame_. The Earth kept dropping away, faster and faster. Now the Eastern side of the Japanese archipelago could be seen. Something didn't make sense.

"How come we're not crushed by this insane acceleration?" I asked.

"It's a little more advanced than what they teach at the Unified Class, but the theory of General Relativity states that acceleration and gravity are essentially the same thing. It also states that gravitation can be described both as a remote force and as an alteration of the shape of space. For example, one could say that a thrown object moves in a curved path because it experiences a remote force, or because the Earth's gravitational field bends space such that the path we see it take is actually a straight trajectory. Likewise, a simple levitation can be described as an application of a force, but also as a distortion of the shape of space. These are not just alternate explanations of a phenomenon: they have been demonstrated to be truly equivalent statements. If it's possible to do it to defy gravity, it's also possible to counteract acceleration. You just need to understand the principles behind it. Also, by doing this, it should be possible to reach effectively infinite speeds."

I could see that the Earth was round now. Our speed continued to increase, to the point where it looked like the Earth was falling away from us, like a ball dropped off a cliff. Even though I felt no motion, the fact that my eyes were focusing at infinity gave my brain a sense of our mind-boggling speed.

Our path started to curve so that the sun was at our backs, and we experienced a 'full Earth'. A little to my right I saw a similarly full moon in the distance.

"Is there really no limit to what our Power can do?" I mused.  
"That's the biggest question, isn't it? I'll say that in this case, like with so many other things, the theoretical ideas were conceived of in the late prehistoric era. But I can personally take the credit for this one: I had the idea independently almost a century before I stumbled upon the writings of Miguel Alcubierre."

We finally started to slow down and came to a stop when the Earth's apparent diameter was about three times that of the moon from the surface.

Saki's voice was almost a whisper, "It's just suspended in the void. There's an endless expanse of nothing, and then suddenly, there's something there. And it's the nexus of our existence. Right now, we're farther away than anyone else is. I think we're farther than anyone ever has been. Even the ancients."

I whispered back, "Wow... It looks so still. It's like it's sitting there just for us to look at. The colors are so vibrant. I—I don't know what to say; it's just so beautiful. I can't even describe what this is making me feel, but it's compelling me to express myself, to do _something_ , I don't know what."

Saki assumed the lotus position and motioned for me to do so as well. She started chanting a mantra, and I joined in, entering the tranquility of meditation. It didn't take long in this place. I saw us and the _Mizugame_ as just another body anchored in space, all motions at this scale taking place over imperceptible periods of time.

When Saki stopped chanting and spoke, her voice commanded a new gravity and presence. It was not intimidating, however, but evoked something more like definitive advice from a trusted friend. She began, "Here we are, far from home and looking upon it from above. From this vantage, feel the insignificance and impermanence of all you know. Your existence and experiences are merely a flickering shadow in the vastness of the cosmos. You feel yourself to be separate from an external world, but reality makes no such distinction. There is only cause and effect. You are the dancer and the dance. You are the instrument the universe plays, and the universe is the instrument you play. Our Power is only one voice in the ensemble, and is ultimately no different than the others. Humanity has taken eons to reach a stage where we can use it, and our first encounter was disastrous, but over millennia we are gradually coming to learn to coexist with it. Now you need to learn to coexist with it. It is a part of the universe. It is a part of us. We are a part of the universe. We are a part of all Power. This is how things always were, even when we did not know it to be so. Coexistence is possible, for we are already coexisting."

I was one with the universe. Energy going into me, energy coming from me. I no longer held the illusion of identity that governed waking life, and I now saw myself as my local part of the universe's self-experience of information conduction: not an identity, but a configuration.

"Let us burn away the last of your worldly desires. Look at the Earth."

My focus went to the rays of light entering me from the surface of the planet, tying us together with interaction.

"Your last worldly fear is of the unknown, of the world outside of yourself, the unseen world inside yourself. Cast all of your fears away. That planet is where you are from, and I. Where all life grew from the nonliving. Dissolve the distinction between self and other, for what you look upon now is a mirror of yourself. Give up your Power to the void lest you be consumed by it. We shall seal your Power into the Earth itself. Put all of your Power and mind into the Earth, pull it toward you with all your might and consider it as your own body. Put all your feelings, everything, into the Earth. You may not see the results, but we always affect the world far more than we think. Your pull can move the Earth, even if only imperceptibly."

I really felt that the Earth was me. All that existed was Saki's disembodied voice and that glowing disk. I was apart from it, apart from myself. I felt my Power hauling on it, reeling it closer, longing for my disembodied mind to return to my new spherical body.

"Hidenori Inoue! Your Power has been sealed within!" Her voice pierced through my trance and the Earth disappeared with her gesture, leaving only the endless expanse of stars in all directions. Looking around, I could not see the moon, sun, or even Saki. I was nothing. I felt as though I had been stabbed in the heart, and all of the wind was knocked out of me. My Power was gone, or blocked so deep I could not reach it at all. My body and mind recoiled from the blow, feeling sick and empty.

"All worldly desires must become ash, and scattered across the endless wastes! Hidenori Inoue! In your deep devotion to the Earth and to life, you have relinquished your Power. I now offer you a proper mantra, and summon a new spirit to grant you Power again."

She put her arm around my back, one hand on my shoulder, the other on my chest. She leaned in to my left ear, so close that I could lightly feel her lips on it, and whispered:

" _Vitam impendere vero. Transit umbra, lux permanet."_

She snapped her fingers and the Earth was back. Its brightness hurt my eyes. I felt warmth and life rushing back into me, the old strength coming in anew, but an octave higher. Saki made a gesture, and something like a wave of static washed over my body, making my hairs momentarily stand on end. I turned to look at her and she was beaming.

"Congratulations!" she said, "The leak has stopped! You're in control again!"

For a moment we shared a look full of unspoken meaning, one of the most sublime moments of my life, and then, we hugged each other tightly and kissed. Tears of relief were streaming down my face, and hers. All my pent up stress released itself in the contact of our embrace, the softness of her lips, her incredible scent. The bond we shared here I knew I would take with me for the rest of my days.

Eventually, we pulled apart, remaining leaned against each other and looking at the Earth.

She started idly playing with my hair and finally said, "It might not last… And it may not work on others, but I think today we might have seen the end of Karmic Demons. And, if I'm right, maybe if we take the children up here when their Powers awaken we'll no longer need the Sacred Barriers, either."

I responded, "Just another entry in your long list of accomplishments, no doubt."

"Actually, most of my endeavors failed utterly, especially my attempts to save the people I loved. And most of my victories were Pyrrhic. Or just barely averting total disaster by dumb luck. But today… hahahahahHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Today, I think… I think I might have just hard _won_ one. Take that, chaos! Sometimes, my ideas actually line up with how the world works!"

"You did it. 1500 years in terror of Karmic Demons, and you ended it. Well, I may speak prematurely, but even if this doesn't completely work, I think it will lead to something that does."

We stared at the Earth for another pause. This time it was me who broke the silence, "So, before we go back, can we just admire the view for a while longer?

"Absolutely."


End file.
